1 ECU - Cercle numismatique de Colmar [68]

Issued by the Cercle Numismatique de Colmar, a numismatic club based in Alsace, this aluminum ECU belongs to a wave of locally produced fantasy ECU pieces that proliferated across French municipalities and associations in the early 1990s as the Maastricht Treaty kept the single European currency in public debate. These were never legal tender — they circulated informally at club events and coin fairs, functioning more as membership tokens and trade pieces than currency. Colmar's position in Alsace, a region that had changed hands between France and Germany four times since 1871, gave such European-themed issues a particular local resonance.